Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History - Hardcover

Ben-Ur, Aviva

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814799825 ISBN 13: 9780814799826

Publisher: NYU Press, 2009

Synopsis

A significant number of Sephardic Jews, tracing their remote origins to Spain and Portugal, immigrated to the United States from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans from 1880 through the 1920s, joined by a smaller number of Mizrahi Jews arriving from Arab lands. Most Sephardim settled in New York, establishing the leading Judeo-Spanish community outside the Ottoman Empire. With their distinct languages, cultures, and rituals, Sephardim and Arab-speaking Mizrahim were not readily recognized as Jews by their Ashkenazic coreligionists. At the same time, they forged alliances outside Jewish circles with Hispanics and Arabs, with whom they shared significant cultural and linguistic ties.

The failure among Ashkenazic Jews to recognize Sephardim and Mizrahim as fellow Jews continues today. More often than not, these Jewish communities are simply absent from portrayals of American Jewry. Drawing on primary sources such as the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) press, archival documents, and oral histories, Sephardic Jews in America offers the first book-length academic treatment of their history in the United States, from 1654 to the present, focusing on the age of mass immigration.

About this title

About the Author:

Aviva Ben-Ur is Associate Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she also serves as Adjunct Associate Professor in the history department and the Spanish and Portuguese programs. She is the author of A Ladino Legacy: The Judeo-Spanish Collection of Louis N. Levy.

Review:

“Ben-Ur’s book is a valuable contribution to American Jewish historiography, within which treatments of the Sephardic experience have either focused exclusively on the “Old” Sephardic “Grandees” who came to the America before 1776 or, in a contemporary context, have limited themselves to a primarily ethnographic concentration on the folkways of particular communities.”
-American Historical Review

“Now, more than five centuries later, dozens of musicians, writers, poets . . . are reclaiming that culture to create a veritable Sephardic renaissance. Many artists mine Sephardic culture because they want to popularize a lesser-known Jewish heritage.”
-Heritage Florida Jewish News

"The obscure documentary evidence Ben-Ur has unearthed gives the content of this book a provocative critical edge...this book brings to the fore issues of race, identity, marginalization, and displacement, which in a globalized world are issues of profound and enduring relevance." -George Lee Cuellar,Journal of the American Academy of Religion

“Now, more than five centuries later, dozens of musicians, writers, poets . . . are reclaiming that culture to create a veritable Sephardic renaissance. Many artists mine Sephardic culture because they want to popularize a lesser-known Jewish heritage.”
-American Israelite

“Now, more than five centuries later, dozens of musicians, writers, poets . . . are reclaiming that culture to create a veritable Sephardic renaissance. Many artists mine Sephardic culture because they want to popularize a lesser-known Jewish heritage.”
-Reporter

”The most detailed and thoughtful discussion on why Sephardic Jews have been excluded from mainstream Jewish life in the United States.”-Moment

“Now, more than five centuries later, dozens of musicians, writers, poets . . . are reclaiming that culture to create a veritable Sephardic renaissance. Many artists mine Sephardic culture because they want to popularize a lesser-known Jewish heritage.”
-Intermountain Jewish News

"Sephardic Jews in America is...a scholarly landmark...[its] multilayered trove of ethnographic and historical detail will interest scholars of ethnicity as a rich basis for comparative studies."-David Graizbord,Journal of American Ethnic History

”Offers refreshing new insights into the Sephardic migration from Ottoman lands to America in the early twentieth century. Drawing heavily upon the unknown riches of the Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) press, Ben-Ur illuminates many unknown aspects of the Jewish immigrant experience. She sheds new light on American Jewry, providing a different narrative that will be especially welcome to students of ethnicity and immigration in general as well as readers seeking information on the Hispanic-Jewish encounter.”

-Jane S. Gerber,Director of the Institute for Sephardic Studies, City University of New York

“Now, more than five centuries later, dozens of musicians, writers, poets . . . are reclaiming that culture to create a veritable Sephardic renaissance. Many artists mine Sephardic culture because they want to popularize a lesser-known Jewish heritage.”
-Buffalo Jewish Review

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0814799825
• ISBN 13: 9780814799826
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336